ni4 



(\ I. K A N r \ O S T K B !•: F, C U L T U R K 



October, 1921 



honey flow lie dosed by carefully planned 

 plantings of different varieties of sweet clo- 

 ver? Attempts were made years ago to 

 to close this gap by early planting of buck- 

 wheat but without success. Usually plants 

 blooming out of season furnish but little if 

 anv nectar. 



QC 



OCTOBER is preeminently the month for 

 packing bees for winter. In the far North 

 the earlier in the 

 October Best month this is done 

 Time For the better. In fact, 



Packing Bees, some northern bee- 

 keepers prefer to 

 pack their bees late in September. As a 

 rule, there is less rain during October than 

 during other fall months, so that the work 

 of packing is not often interrupted for long- 

 by bad weather, and the packing can be 

 done while the hives and material are dry. 

 If packing is postponed until later, rain or 

 snow often interferes with the work and the 

 hives may be wet or covered with snow. If 

 nectar is gathered late or if feeding is nec- 

 essary, the nectar or syrup is no doubt bet- 

 ter ripened when the bees are packed. Thru- 

 out the North all winter packing and feed- 

 ing, not aready done, should be done this 

 month. 



A LARGE percentage of the honey labels 

 used on bottles and cans of honey in this 



country con- 

 Shall We Eliminate 

 the Word Extracted 

 from Honey Labels? 



tain the words 

 " E X t r a c t ed 

 Honey, ' ' the 

 word ■ ' E X- 

 being almost as 

 ' Honev. ' ' This 



tracted ' ' in some cases 

 prominent as the word 

 term has so long been established in bee- 

 keeping literature that it would not be wise 

 ut this time to attempt to eliminate it, even 

 if it were desirable to do so. As a technical 

 term for beekeepers perhaps no better could 

 be found, but why confuse the public by 

 printing a technical term in beekeeping on 

 honey labels'? To many people, "Extracted 

 Honey" conveys the idea that the honey 

 has been put thru some process. They think 

 of process butter or lemon extract, and too 

 often they associate ' ' Extracted Honey ' ' 

 with manufactured food products. If they 

 know how good "real honey" is, they may 

 drive to the country to buy it from some 

 beekeeper who sells the honey ' ' just as the 

 bees made it." 



Instead of making capital of the fact that 

 the consumer gets the honey just as the bees 

 made it except that it is transferred from 

 the waxen containers, built by the bees, into 

 glass or tin containers for the market, bee- 

 keepers have been using a term on their 

 honey labels which suggests that the honey 

 has been changed by some special process. 

 Why not eliminate this word from honev 



labels, simply using the word "Honey?" It 

 is a good word to conjure with and any at- 

 tempt to improve it with any qualifying 

 word is liable to make it less attractive. 

 Comb honey can then be differentiated by 

 referring to it as "Honey in the Comb" or 

 ' ' Comb Honey. ' ' 



ELSEWHERE in this issue are discussions 

 of the effect of the quality of the winter 

 stores in the North 

 Importance of where the bees are 

 the Quality of often confined to 

 Winter Stores, their hives for long 

 periods without a 

 cleansing flight. In cellar wintering suc- 

 cess or failure hinges largely on this one 

 factor; for, no matter how strong the colo- 

 nies are in young bees or how well they are 

 protected, successful wintering in cellars 

 can not be accomplished on inferior stores. 

 In the far North the same thing is true in 

 outdoor wintering. Fortunately for the 

 beekeepers in the far North the honey stored 

 there is better for winter stores, as a rule, 

 than that stored farther south, but it can 

 not always be depended on as safe for the 

 northern winters. 



Last winter was so mild that the quality 

 of the stores made but little, if any, differ- 

 ence in the way the bees wintered in the 

 northern part of the United States, for they 

 had frequent cleansing flights; but we need 

 only to recall conditions during the previ- 

 ous winter for an example of the disaster 

 which comes from a combination of a se- 

 vere winter and poor stores, even as far 

 south as Kentucky and Tennessee. 



The question again comes up whether it 

 will pay beekeepers to go to the trouble and 

 expense of feeding to correct the quality of 

 winter stores where they are not of the best, 

 doing this year after year, in localities 

 where perhaps only one winter in five or ten 

 would bring disaster from inferior stores. 

 How nmny business men, in order to save 

 a little each year, would take a chance on 

 their business being wiped out once in every 

 five to ten years? Instead of taking such 

 chances, business men pay out large sums 

 annually in various kinds of insurance to 

 protect themselves against a possible loss. 

 Since beekeeping is rapidly becoming a 

 serious business with many, such chances 

 should no longer be taken. 



In many cases at least when the stores 

 are inferior, the beekeeper actually profits 

 by feeding 10 to 15 pounds of good stores 

 after brood-rearing has ceased, even during 

 the milder winters, because the bees con- 

 sume less of good stores than they do of 

 poor stores. This is because the bees are 

 more active when they use poor winter 

 stores. The actual consumption of stores 

 during the broodless period is sometimes 

 two or three times as many pounds when 

 the stores are poor as when they are good, 

 while in the si)ring the poor stores probably 



